I don’t remember it clearly now but I seem to recall thinking the census was brought into disrepute by a decision to belittle by ignoring those who entered Jedi as their religion – making it something other than an honest counting of data. If in this thing numbers are misreported by considering some (Wikipedia tells me) “Answer understood, but will not be counted” as “Jedi” was then no part of it can be trusted, can it, when counters apparently choose what answers are acceptable?

I think that should be “it their statement of belief recorded, it did.’ I’m still learning, but in time hope to be able to do the ironing by power of my mind alone. Because there is more chance of that happening than there is my wife might do it – sorry, I meant to say:

‘More chance than there is wife do it might…er… that”..

Ps I think Lord Darth Vader has worked out what Luke is getting for Christmas.
This because he told me:
“I have felt his presents…”

the census was brought into disrepute by a decision to belittle by ignoring those who entered Jedi as their religion

Nope.
‘Jedi’ was ignored because of the co-ordinated internet campaign (in the 2001 census?) by a handful of playful geeks to mess with the numbers. It got media traction and grew a life of its own. Stats NZ made the call to ignore the those responses to that question alone. In principle it was no different to the decision they made on the ‘New Zealander’ ethnicity question in 2006.

It would be more interesting to see figures giving change as a % of total membership. When comparing groups that have relatively small and potentially quite widely varying membership numbers, it isn’t necessarily all that enlightening just to present absolute figures for increase/decrease.

I can’t comment on issue with in the Jedi or Sith orders, but for the Wiccans and Druids, there is a move in wider pagan circles to stick your religion down as ‘Pagan’ rather then more specific in the hopes of getting it on the list (a bit like the ‘Jedi’ campiagn, but quieter and with more tree hugging) – i.e. people may well have shifted from ‘Wiccan’ or ‘Druid’ to ‘Pagan’ (I know I have). I would be interested to know if the numbers calling themselves ‘Pagan’ have risen by anything like the decline in the related groupings (but I’d better not run the analysis at work…)

@kalvarnsen – the list of pre-printed religions you can choose from on the census form – not that it takes that long to write 5 letters, but being on that list does give a sense of having an officially recognised religion. This is not necessarily that a big deal on a personal level, but it does help with things like getting celebrants approved.

Put myself down as a Satanist. I was considering converting from Christianity to Judaism a few years back, so they could have had an extra Jew in their statistics but, no, I’m considering Satanism to be my gap religion, in the way that people have a gap year in between High school and Uni. Next step may be back to Christianity, or possibly Buddhism but Buddhism isn’t as trendy as it was five years ago when I dabbled in it. Already tried Rastafarianism. Not going to go anywhere near any of the other options you’ve listed.

@verdant: That list is just a convenience when it comes to printing censuses. The idea that being on it makes one an ‘officially recognised religion’ is spurious. There’s no such thing in NZ, and being on the census list doesn’t give a religious group any extra rights to have officials approved as celebrants – that’s a separate decision made by Internal Affairs.